Liam Lawson looks on after practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Netherlands. Photo / Getty
Liam Lawson looks on after practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Netherlands. Photo / Getty
Kiwi Liam Lawson reckons he announced his intention to become a Formula One driver almost as soon as he could talk.
His dad Jared wasn’t a competitor himself, but he did love watching top motor racing and little Liam must have picked something up.
Now, at 21, the impossible dreamis verging on probable, after the Red Bull reserve driver’s highly credible opening F1 efforts in Holland and Italy.
With AlphaTauri driver Daniel Ricciardo still injured, Lawson should get at least two more cracks at F1 races this season, to further prove his worth for 2024.
After a strong career in various classes around Australasia, Asia and Europe, Liam Lawson is close to stepping permanently onto one of sport’s greatest stages.
1) Lawson is well on the way to fulfilling the F1 career he first dreamed of as a tiny kid. Lawson says his father Jared - who loved to watch F1 and V8s - would give a cursory “I know” when his son first revealed the idea. But Jared soon took up the cause, helping to launch the kid into a go-kart career by immersing himself in the sport.
“My family gave up a lot so I could pursue go-karts,” says Lawson.
2) The budding F1 star repeatedly finished last in the first year of go-karting, until his dad invested in decent motors.
Lawson said his first kart “sucked” but suspected his dad first thought he, Liam, was the issue.
In contrast, Lawson has often won on debut as his career moved around different classes. This includes winning his opening Formula 4 race in Australia as a 15-year-old.
3) Lawson won’t name names but says a famous Kiwi motor racing driver was among those who told him not to both pursuing F1, because it was too difficult to achieve. Lawson was so determined that he bypassed the normal Kiwi route of joining Supercars, and headed straight to Europe. Now he is linked with Red Bull, the home of unbeatable F1 champ Max Verstappen.
4) Born in Hastings, Lawson was raised in Pukekohe where he would skip high school to spend time with one of his mentors, the everlasting racing driver Kenny Smith. Lawson said he would go to Smith’s workshop to hang out and talk about cars. Schooling ran a distant second to motor racing - and he headed to European motor racing aged 16, with mum Kristy and a sister also travelling to smooth the transition.
5) His first European home was in the Netherlands. The 1.74m Lawson said he found Dutch people to be very tall, which made him feel short. He also fell short in the cooking department, living on supermarket salads and potatoes to the point that he bypasses roast potatoes these days. Ironically, Lawson says his biggest social media moment was a live stream of him making an omelette, his specialty dish.
6) Lawson’s girlfriend is 20-year-old Californian science student Hannah St John, who studies at Arizona State. It is not clear where they met but she is believed to have made one trip to New Zealand with Liam. Budding Red Bull drivers are based at Milton Keynes in England.
Liam Lawson and partner Hannah St John.
7) Pinning Lawson down on one childhood hero has proved tricky.
He definitely revered British F1 legend Lewis Hamilton - he says Hamilton’s biography is probably the only book he has ever read. He was also inspired by the full range of Kiwi motor racers and in particular Richie Stanaway - “the guy I wanted to be like”.
Kenny Smith and Lawson’s father were other big influences and heroes. And he has also named Aussie James Courtney, the 2010 Supercars champ, as a driver he loved to follow and adopted Courtney’s 18 as his first go-kart number.
8) Lawson is an excellent acoustic guitarist and studied the instrument for about seven years, taking the London College of Music exams. He regrets ignoring his music in recent years, saying he has “lost a lot of what I could do.”
Rap is his preferred genre - although not the only one - in the pre-race buildup, with J. Cole and Drake his favourite artists.
Lawson still loves playing with a couple of mates and also sings.
9) The teenager was left “fuming” after his team kept him in the dark over the biggest break of his career.
Lawson had just started the 2019 Toyota Racing Series when Red Bull’s head of driver development Dr Helmut Marko made contact with an offer.
Lawson’s advisers didn’t let him know for a couple of weeks, because they wanted him to concentrate on TRS.
10) Lawson still rates his opening win in that TRS as his best, for emotional and career reasons. He produced an amazing drive in the Cromwell event, overtaking in the wet and claiming the Dorothy Smith Memorial Trophy named in honour of Kenny Smith’s mother. And Lawson said the victory is what secured his Red Bull contract.
11) His Red Bull/AlphaTauri salary is loosely rumoured to be $500,000 - the way his career is going, money is not going to be an object.
12) If he wasn’t a motor racing driver, Lawson said he would have aimed to be a dirt bike rider.
13) When asked why he loves motor racing, the answer is simple. “It’s as basic as it gets - the feeling of pure speed.”
